Skip to main content

Ransom Payment? $1.7 Billion Transferred to Iran Was All Cash

Share This article

The Obama administration is acknowledging that the $1.7 billion given to Iran earlier this year was made entirely in cash.

Treasury spokeswoman Dawn Selak said paying cash was necessary because of the "effectiveness of U.S. and international sanctions," explaining that Iran was isolated from the international finance system.

But Republicans aren't buying that argument.

"All of this was done in secret, hidden from the American people and from Congress," said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The department explained that part of the $1.7 billion was a settlement of a decades-old arbitration claim between the United States and Iran and $1.3 billion of that is said to be estimated interest on Iranian cash the U.S. has held onto since 1970.

The administration had previously declined to say if the interest was delivered to Iran in physical cash and it is now reported that the money came from a fund administered by the Treasury Department for settling litigation claims.

The Judgment Fund is taxpayer money Congress has permanently approved in the event it's needed, allowing the president to bypass direct congressional approval to make a settlement, the Associated Press reports.

The United States previously paid out $278 million in Iran-related claims by using the fund in 1991. But an initial $400 million cash delivery was sent to Iran on January 17, 2016, the same day Tehran agreed to release four American prisoners.

The Obama administration had claimed the events were separate, but recently acknowledged the cash was used as leverage until the Americans were allowed to leave Iran.

Republicans have said the payments were ransom and are supporting legislation that would bar payments from the Judgment Fund to Iran until Tehran pays the nearly $55.6 billion that U.S. courts have judged it owes to American victims of 9/11.

"President Obama's disastrous nuclear deal with Iran was sweetened with an illicit ransom payment and billions of dollars for the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the bill's primary sponsor.

Share This article

About The Author

CBN News